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Sinclair Broadcast Group, which plans to air a CIA-agit-prop-style documentary called “Stolen Honor: Wounds that never heal” which is highly critical of John Kerry’s anti-war activities, should be regarded as part of a shadow government operation running a psychological covert action against the American people.

Sinclair plans to air the program October 22 at 8pm, a week and a half before the November 2 election. Sixty-two Sinclair affiliates including a dozen in the battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Iowa and Wisconsin, plan to air the 42-minute long negative campaign ad for George W. Bush in the form of a documentary.

The airing of the documentary to nearly a quarter of all TV markets in the U.S. represents tens of millions of dollars in in-kind campaign donations to the Bush coffers. It is one of the most blatant and illegal uses of the people’s airwaves in U.S. history and another signal that the return of Cold War-era-style covert operations are being unleashed on the American people.

The so-called "documentary" resembles standard U.S. government agitation propaganda films of the 1950s and the usual spooky suspects are involved in its making and showing. Carlton Sherwood, a former Washington Times reporter produced the video. The Washington Times founder is the bizarre cult leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who runs a secretive far-flung financial empire with close ties to the Bush family and the South Korean CIA.

In 1992, a PBS Frontline investigation reported that a key money source for Moon's religious cult was the self-proclaimed "World's Richest Fascist," Ryoichi Sasakawa, the man who brought Mussolini's fascism to Japan priot to World War II.

Moon's influence in the United States increased dramatically when then-Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush, former CIA director, invited Moon to be his guest at the Reagan inauguration. Among other things, Moon has said that he arranged for Jesus to enter heaven by marrying him to a dead South Korean woman. More importantly, Moon's eccentric claims overshadow his connections to the Bush family.

In September 1995, Bush the Elder announced he would be spending a week in Japan on behalf of a Moonie front organization, The Women's Federation for World Peace. The current President's father downplayed accusations of Moonie brain-washing of disciples and coercion against enemies. The New York Times noted that the former President Bush's presence "is seen by some as lending the group [Moonies] legitimacy."

In November 1996, Bush the Elder traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina to serve as the principal speaker at a dinner inaugurating the new Spanish-language Moon weekly newspaper Tiempos del Mundo. The New York Times noted in 1997 that Moon "has been reaching out to conservative Christians in this country in the last few years by emphasizing shared goals like support for sexual abstinence outside of marriage and opposition to homosexuality." Moon also appeals to the Second Amendment crowd. In March 1999, the Washington Post reported that the messiah owned the lucrative Kahr Arms Company through Saelio, Inc.

Sinclair Ventures is a wholly-owned private subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcasting, according to the company's website. Sinclair Ventures holds investments in Jadoo Power Systems, a military contractor that announced in a September 28, 2004 press release that "We are one of the first companies to provide commerical fuel cell products and . . . power packaged for military application." Jadoo's contract is with the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and is designed to "address the power needs of the military 'Special Forces' marketplace."

Additionally, Sinclair Ventures is a "strategic investor" in Time Domain, Inc. "The company's government solutions division is producing UWB systems and prototypes for high-speed communications, precise tracking, and through-wall radar sensing for its Government customers."

Let's see, Sinclair Ventures tells us that "Its decision to invest must comply with the parent company's objectives." At least they're honest, since their objectives appear to be in "remote law enforcement," "through-wall radar sensing," "the power needs of the military 'Special Forces'." All this is in line with the Moonie-CIA agit-prop psychological operations of the parent company, Sinclair Broadcasting.

Mark Hyman is the Vice President for Corporate Relations for Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns and operates programs or provides sales services affiliated with the top six TV networks in the country: ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, UPN and Warner Brothers. Twenty of Sinclair's stations, not surprisingly, are right-wing Fox affiliates. Only three are with CBS.

The Democratic National Committee and 18 U.S. Senators have already objected to this unprecedented broadcasting of a thinly-veiled Bush attack ad. What they also need to do is investigate the ties between Hyman and the CIA. We need a new Church Committee to uncover the practices of the CIA and their specific relationship with the Bush family.

Hyman came to fame last April when he became the point man for attacking Ted Koppel and the ABC national television network for deciding to honor the soldiers killed in Iraq by reading their names on his Nightline show. The so-called Patriot Defenders Network rushed to Hyman’s aid when he emerged as Sinclair’s attack dog and refused to air Koppel’s show.

It should come as no surprise that Hyman, according to sources at the Columbus ABC affiliate WSYX-TV, brags of his ongoing ties with the CIA. According to one highly-placed station executive, Sinclair Broadcasting touted Hyman’s connections to the CIA in promoting “The Point,” the Hyman-hosted daily commentaries that are so far to the Right they would embarrass Mussolini.

Hyman’s profile on the Sinclair Broadcasting website documents his ties to both the U.S. military and the CIA. Hyman has served in both the Army and the Navy where he graduated from the U.S. Navy Academy in 1981. When he left active duty in 1989 he “became employed as a civilian in the Office of Naval Intelligence.”

Hyman’s profile on the website brags that as “a Captain in the Naval Reserve, he has served in leadership positions in CIA’s National Warning Staff, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office and he is currently a Commanding Officer in the Naval Reserve Space and Network Warfare Program.”

Hyman, not willing to hide his ties to the Company, notes that “the military organizations in which he has served have been awarded four CIA National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Commendations during his service.” Hyman’s current position puts him in a key position in promoting President Bush’s dream of Star Wars II embodied in one of the government’s most shocking documents, “Joint Vision for 2020” which commits our nation to “full spectrum dominance” of the Earth.

During the heyday of the Cold War, the CIA allegedly instituted the notorious Operation Mockingbird to make sure the American mass media sang patriotic hymns in unison. The Company bribed journalists, planted stories, and wholly controlled TV, radio stations, newspapers and publishing houses.

These are the real wounds that will never heal: the fact that a covert intelligence agency deliberately manipulated public opinion and compromised both the Fourth Estate and the First Amendment.

What appears to be happening here is that the former CIA director and 41st President George Herbert Walker Bush is desperately using his connections and old school tactics to save his blundering son. Think of Hyman in terms of retro 1950s blatant Voice of America propaganda. Just like the coup in Florida in the 2000 election, the CIA’s time-tested tactics throughout the world are now being overly practiced on the U.S. population.

That which they used to do secretly in Operation Mockingbird, they now do openly on Sinclair Broadcasting with Mark Hyman. That’s the real point.

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Revised and updated October 17, 2004

Bob Fitrakis is the Editor of the Free Press (freepress.org), a political science professor, attorney, and author of Spooks, Nukes, and Nazis (Columbus Alive, 2003), which includes his award-winning investigative reports covering CIA covert activities.